What are CCC’s?

There are seven Cross Cutting Concepts (also known as CCC’s)

• Patterns - Observing patterns of forms and events can help us organize and classify them. These patterns can prompt questions about relationships and the factors that influence them.

• Cause and Effect - Events have causes, sometimes simple, sometimes complicated! A major activity of science is investigating and explaining what causes what and the mechanism by which they do so (ie. how they do so). Such mechanisms can then be tested and used to predict and explain future events.

• Scale, Proportion, and Quantity - In considering phenomena, it is critical to recognize what is relevant at different measures of size, time, and energy. We must also recognize how changes in scale, proportion, or quantity can affect a system’s structure or performance.

• Systems and System Models - Defining the system under study - like RPB’s life cycle and things it interacts with - requires us to be specific about the boundaries of that system. Then once we’ve done that we can make an explicit model of that system. Taken together, our understanding of the system and our model can provide us with important tools for understanding and testing our ideas for what may be impacting it.

• Energy and Matter - Understanding the changes of energy and matter into, out of, and within a system helps one understand that systems’ possibilities and limitations.

• Structure and Function - The way in which an object or living thing is shaped and its substructure determine many of its properties and functions.

• Stability and Change - Understanding how stable a system is and understanding what determines its rates of change or its evolution are important for understanding the system.